Problems with the password-reset email feature

[richvdh]

I thought it might be worth collecting together the reports we've seen about problems people are having with the password-reset-email feature when they upgrade to Synapse 1.0, so that we can decide what to do about them.

• Docker image doesn't start: Docker image no longer starts if you set SYNAPSE_SMTP_HOST #5430
• More generally, anyone who has set email but not public_baseurl will find synapse doesn't start
• Anyone using a custom templates_dir (and has email set) will find synapse doesn't start (fixed by Make it clearer that the template dir is relative to synapse's root dir #5543)
• You now need to pip install jinja2: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'jinja2' #5431
• Poor logging: Password resets log that they are sending push notifications #5485
• Requires a template even when disabled: Synapse requires a password reset template even if the feature is disabled #5496 (?)

[richvdh]

Another one: the changelog isn't terribly helpful:

"Add ability to perform password reset via email without trusting the identity server. (#5377)": fails to mention that your server will lose the ability to do password resets unless you reconfigure it somewhat.

---

Fixed in #5545
~ anoa

[anoadragon453]

More generally, anyone who has set email but not public_baseurl will find synapse doesn't start

This is intentional, but I do see it as a problem in the context of the Docker image. Hopefully we can fix that separately.

[richvdh]

More generally, anyone who has set email but not public_baseurl will find synapse doesn't start

We decided this wasn't a big problem, but did decide to make the error message clearer (#5616)

[richvdh]

all done! thanks @anoadragon453